Low self-affine exponents of fractured glass ceramics surfaces.

The geometry of postmortem rough fracture surfaces of porous glass ceramics made of sintered glass beads is shown experimentally to be self-affine with an exponent zeta=0.40+/-0.04, remarkably lower than the "universal" value zeta=0.

Delayed fracture in porous media.

The fracture of porous media subjected to a constant load is studied. Contrary to homogeneous solids in which fracture usually happens instantaneously at a well-defined breaking strength, the fracture of a porous medium can occur with a delay, allowing us to quantify the average lifetime of the unbroken material. We show that the average fracture probability, a key property for risk analysis in civil engineering, is given by the probability of crack nucleation.